


If We Believed in Stars

by Remus_la_swearwolf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Ghosts, Hallucinations, Haunting, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loneliness, M/M, Mental Illness, Seaside, Stars, Suicide, Welsh Remus Lupin, remus believes in stars but nobody else does, suicide briefly mentioned, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-24 22:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22165591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remus_la_swearwolf/pseuds/Remus_la_swearwolf
Summary: When Remus Lupin was eight years old, his mother flung herself off the tallest cliff in that grey little Welsh seaside town, mumbling nonsense about the stars, and about the sea swallowing them all up. Everybody knows that stars don't exist.Remus has always believed in stars. The people in his village have looked at him like he's odd since before he can remember -- and he knows what they whisper, that it's Loony Lupin again, as he walks past them in the street.But he doesn't care, because he knows something they don't.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 50
Collections: RS Fireside Tales Vol.2





	If We Believed in Stars

When Remus Lupin was eight years old, his mother flung herself off the tallest cliff in that grey little Welsh seaside town, mumbling nonsense about the stars, and about the sea swallowing them all up. Everybody knows that stars don't exist.

Remus has always believed in stars. The people in his village have looked at him like he's odd since before he can remember -- and he knows what they whisper, that _it's Loony Lupin again_ , as he walks past them in the street.

But he doesn't care, because he knows something they don't.

The cliffs call to him, on still nights when the wind pulls at his hair, and the moon is full, hanging cool and serene, in a darkened sky that others less observant would foolishly deem empty. But to Remus, the sky is an infinite canvas of every shade of midnight blue imaginable to the weak human mind, dotted with fiery globes of gold and silver, swirling above in a chaotic and ancient design established by gods long since forgotten, at the dawn of time. The stars burn overhead, weaving themselves into intricate patterns and leaving silvery scars across the sky as they fly, and as always, Remus feels just as overwhelmed as he did the first time.

And if the sky is a canvas, then the sea is surely its rippling mirror, beholding the stars in its fathomless expanse, and glowing with the light of the swallowed sun. If this is insanity, then Remus would surrender to its clutches willingly.

And it was here that he met him. Remus has the murky memory of running up to the cliffs after the whole village is silent and asleep, drunk and sobbing because his mother is ill again, and the boy he had thought he'd love forever had had enough of this miserable little grey town in the middle of nowhere, and was leaving to the big city in the south.

The memory is smudged and blurred at the edges; foggy and damp in his brain, as if the sea itself had crept into his mind and had coursed its immutable path over his transient recollections, until they were eroded to nothing but dust and sand.

But he remembers enough. Because how could he ever forget something like that?

He sits on the cliff edge, as usual, his disturbed mind peaceful for once as the wind toussles his hair, and the sea below breaks on the rocks and whispers her secrets to him. If he listens carefully, the voice sounds like his mother. Perhaps the day that the sea had swallowed his mother up, she'd become one with the waves, or maybe the waves had always been a part of her, just as they are part of Remus.

It beats behind his eyes and surges within his heart sometimes.

So Remus leans forward, feeling the late night or early morning drizzle on his face, as he closes his eyes, and sways with the wind, knowing that it will never cast him from his safe perch on the clifftop until the sea says it is ready.

The first time he saw the boy from the stars, it had been a misty and stormy night. The ocean crashed on the rocks, unseasonably stroppy, and Remus had heard the low rumble of thunder echo through the sky. He isn't afraid, though, because the thunder is his friend, and the stars have always protected him.

The clouds swirl together, becoming one and then separating, and for a moment, a shining light brighter than any Remus has ever seen is visible for one blinding moment, as it hurtles towards the earth. The electricity that the thunder has been promising Remus for so long finally comes, heralded in by the grumbling sky and ocean, and it splits the sky into two perfectly shattered halves, white fracture lines spreading and quaking.

The skies have been torn apart, and Remus wonders what sort of ungodly being could destroy his canvas of stars.

He is warned away by the shrieking wind, and it entwines its fingers into his whipped locks as he edges blindly down the cliff-face, drunk and stupid, but he pays it no heed, hissing at it to go away and mind its own business for once. It doesn't listen. The grey rock crumbles beneath his feet, but Remus is sure-footed. These rocks are where he and his mother and the stars had spent most of his childhood, and he knows them better than anywhere else.

The sky groans again, as the dimensions close up once more, sealing the beings on this side of the barrier in eternally.

The moon is sinking slowly, and as Remus bursts onto the sand, panting, the stars have finished fading from the sky. Somebody is standing in the water where the shadows have not yet touched the waves, but as the last ray of moonlight touches their silvery skin, they seem to dissolve into stardust and sea-spray. Remus yells to them hoarsely, to tell them that they are too far out and that it's far too much of a dangerous night to be in this place, but he freezes as he realises they are too far out to be standing upright like that. As the figure begins to fade, he could have sworn that it had turned to look at him for a split second.

The image stays with him, and burns behind his eyelids when he wants to sleep. The pale skin and the eyes which look like they've been stolen from within the heart of a star haunt him.

And although the circles under his eyes are steadily growing darker, and the villagers look at him like he's crazy, drawing the curtains as he walks past, he returns to that place up on the rocks every single night for a week, hoping to catch a glimpse of the starlit stranger out at sea.

But the ocean is empty, and the thin moon doesn't tug and pull at the waves like it did at Remus' bones that night. The water is still, but Remus can hear the whispering of his mother's voice in his head. He frowns, because it's getting difficult to remember if she's ill in bed, or looking up at him from under the waves. The stars are dimmer and the moon is mocking him with its thin leer, and the salty water slides up the cliffs and pours into his bones and his lungs, and it _aches_. His head is throbbing with the stench of sea water and conflicting memories, so he clutches at it and yells. He doesn't come back for months.

Remus has almost settled into a somewhat normal routine. He works for the baker, but he doesn't know how he got his job, seeing as the entire village thinks he's loopy. He suspects that it's because the baker's wife was old friends with his mother before the accident, or perhaps just out of pure pity. The baker's wife had taken care of him for a while, after the accident. She'd always been a kind woman.

He's also made a friend. There's a boy, forced to spend the summer in lonely Wales with his grandmother, and he doesn't care about the rumours and whispers that follow Remus around like a shadow. He's loud, and he doesn't care, and he scoffs at everything that anyone in this forsaken little town has to say. Sometimes he gets closer to Remus than he really should, and Remus doesn't know how to feel about this. He smiles awkwardly, and makes excuses, but he doesn't know how long it will be before the boy grows tired of him and tosses him aside for somebody better. Everybody does eventually.

Soon he's doing badly at his job, he sees less and less of the boy, and the whispers of the villagers are worse than ever. His mother is growing more and more ill with each passing day, and she roams around the tiny little house, looking pale and unhappy. He can sometimes hear her calling to him from the sea, but she won't tell him what's wrong and looks through him like he's not there.

The sheer normalcy of the life forced upon him is driving Remus mad, and although he's promised himself to stay away from the hissing sea and the great mysteries that it presents, he soon finds himself dragged back there by his heartstrings, his feet pulled along unwillingly as his body refuses to listen to his brain.

He's been tossing and turning in bed for hours, but the ache and tug in his bones won't allow him to sleep, and the sea's whispering is almost deafening. He wishes he could understand it. Maybe then, it would leave him alone. He's going mad, and he knows it.

Such madness should not be indulged. That's what he tells himself. It's what his father said to his mother all those years ago, before he left her, and she'd flung herself off the cliffs. He'd never understood her, or her son, and he'd fallen in love with the mystery she presented and the magic, rather than her. And she had been too wild and untameable for him, so he ran away.

But the madness won't let itself be ignored, and Remus is forced upright by an unseen hand that is not his, and his feet move mechanically towards the door. They speed up, and before he knows it, he is running towards the sea faster than he has ever run in his life.

There is peace, in the running. The voices can't follow him. They aren't fast enough to move with him, and for once, he is alone, except for the beating of his heart which echoes louder in his veins and roars like the sea. It's calling him, and he cannot refuse it.

When he stops, he's panting, and his head is spinning, and the flighty bird in his chest is pounding at the cage in him in its clamour to be free. The cliffs call to him, as always, and so do the voices which beckon him from every shadowed and misted corner, but the whisper of the sea and the singing of the moon are louder.

The moon is full, once again, and she illuminates the quietly rushing sea in a sheen of silver as it breaks and crashes on the rocks. The sea is calling to him, and Remus yearns to meet it, finally, after all these years.

He stands upon the sand, uncertain, torn between the calling of the cliffs and the whispering of the waves. Which claimed his mother?

He's trapped, on the sand, like a silver ring between two equally great magnets. His body shudders backwards and forwards in protest, and he feels like he's being pulled apart. His heart is twisting and stretching in his ribcage, and he doesn't think it will ever be the same again.

The moon has started to exert her power over him, too. Remus knows he will die if the sea and the cliffs and the moon don't all release their hold on him. He was foolish to ever come here, after all this time. It is agony. Blood must be leaking from his eyes, his ears, his nose and his mouth by now, as the moon drains what keeps him human from his very veins. Perhaps it wants the sea to replace the liquid in his veins with silver ichor, and the cliffs to replace his pulsing heart with a core of ice cold brimstone.

He screams to the stars, long and loud and desperate, and it is a scream of pain and loss and release.

All at once, the forces that hold him free his limbs and his blood and his heart, and he is left a devastated lump on the wet sands of the beach. He clutches at the ground with shaking hands, only to have the sodden particles slide through his fingers and drop wetly on the rest.

The water swirls around him, pushed forward by the moon, and Remus gives up, and slumps onto the sand, sobbing for all he has lost. His father, who left him, the villagers, who mock him, and his mother, coming and going as she pleases, only she never does, he realises, with the bitter taste of salt and sand in his mouth.

He ignores the waves as they surge up to him and past him, almost friendly in their caress, and the silver bubbles they leave on the shore. If they have anything to say to him, then let them hold their silence forever, because Remus Lupin is done with the cliffs and the moon and the ocean and the stars that only he can see.

Blood from his nose trickles into the water, and Remus watches it apathetically through salt-blurred vision. Tears slide off his cheeks into the tide, and as the water swallows more and more of him up, Remus thinks that it is perhaps his body preparing to become one with the depths at last.

He's numb and exhausted, and the water has started to lap at his open mouth and fill him up from inside. His eyes flutter shut, and he doesn't notice how the sea has risen and the sky is encroaching and the stars are so much brighter than they ever have been . . . Thunder rumbles in the sky, and a flash of crackling lightning rips through the sky.

Remus has almost drifted off into the warm embrace of sleep, lulled by the sighing of the waves and his mother's voice, but the sound of the thunder disturbs him and chases away the lone star he sees behind the darkness of his eyes. He can feel the waves slowly receding from around his body, and their song grows quieter.

His eyelids feel like the cliffs themselves are holding down with their weight, but he forces them open. It doesn't make much of a difference; his eyes are filled with tears and saltwater, but he can see the smudged figure of someone standing above him.

He imagines, for a stricken moment, that it is one of the villagers, hearing the commotion, who has come to lock him up in some grim dungeon or asylum. Perhaps it's what he needs, but it's not what he wants. He moans lowly and tries to crawl away. The figure does not follow him. All he can see of it are its feet.

His vision clears a little, and he shifts onto his back, gasping. Maybe if he shouts loud enough, whoever it is will be scared off and go away. But his voice is not there when he reaches for it. The most noise he can produce is a juddering rasp, or at best a pained moan.

The figure stands over him for a moment longer, then moves silently up the beach, where Remus can't see it.

He hates this. He feels defenceless, and ashamed that this stranger has seen him in his most emotionally naked and vulnerable state. And now they're on his beach, watching him, and he can't see them. Anger rouses him a little. This is his beach, his territory, and this stranger has no business being here watching him, where his mother fell and the sky speaks to him.

He staggers to his feet, and swings his head around blindly, trying to locate the trespasser. His leg sinks under him, and he growls in frustration. The trespasser is standing there, in the shadow of the cliffs. The sky is silent now, and so is the thunder, but the sea hasn't stopped singing to him entirely. But his mind is quieter now than it has been for the entirety of his short, painful life.

His gaze travels up the mysterious figure, and he inhales sharply.

The most beautiful boy in the world with hair as dark as night is watching him from under the cliffs his mother fell from. He's just saved Remus' life, and Remus hates him with every bone in his body.

He stands a way away from the boy, and stares at him blankly. The boy doesn't say anything, but Remus feels as if he knows him from somewhere. There is something odd about him, and with a dull shock, Remus is reminded of the strange figure that rose from the sea all those months ago. Or perhaps it fell from the sky.

The creature standing before him must surely not be human: the silvery glow of its skin wouldn't allow it to be. The bay seems dimmer somehow, supposedly in comparison with the gentle glow of the boy on the beach. Remus glances up at the heavens and realises that the brightest star is no longer seated in its place.

The boy beckons to Remus, and all Remus feels is anger. But he has questions, and perhaps this boy knows more about the song of the stars and the whispers of his mother than he does.

'What are you?' he spits, as the trespasser stares at him with ocean eyes. Not the summer ocean, or the stormy ocean, or the sunset ocean, but the night ocean saturated by the light of the full moon and reflecting the shadows of the stars.

The boy looks at him impassively with eyes that look like they've been stolen from the heart of a star, and even in his fury, Remus is drawn to admire to mesmerising depths of starlit silver. 'I fell from the sky,' he answers at last. His voice is soft and slow, and deep.

'And what does that mean?' demands Remus, enraged by the boy's solemn tone. 'What do you mean you fell from the sky?' His voice is rough around the edges, and still painful to use. But he has to know what this creature is doing here, on his beach.

'I mean that I fell because you called me,' the boy answers simply. 'We came when your mother called on us, and now I come when you call on me.'

'What do you know about my mother?' Remus asks, with less ferocity this time. Maybe this boy can be believed, and he isn't a trickster or a trespasser on Remus' land.

'She was like you, and she believed in stars.'

Remus' heart leaps. 'You believe in stars?' he asks. His voice breaks. 'I'm not -- I'm not insane?' His head spins with the revelations of tonight.

'You have a gift, Remus Lupin, and so did your mother. You are not insane, and you never have been. The stars are as real as you or I are.'

Remus almost collapses right there. The villagers had been wrong about he and his mother all this while. But what he wants to ask the boy, with his silver eyes and silver skin, and the clinging, gossamer nets that hang from his limbs, is _how real are you?_

They stand there in silence, and eventually the burning desire to reach out and touch the glistening skin overwhelms him. He stretches his hand out, intent on brushing the side of that face to see if it is real, but the second his hand makes contact with the boy's skin, he disappears, leaving Remus with arms outstretched like a corpse, wondering if the encounter on the beach had happened in his reality or his mind's fantasy.

With a start, he notices that the sun has started to creep over the edges of the horizon and pour its rays into the sea.

Remus returns to his home, but it is with a heart that is strangely lighter, and not even the cruel words he hears the villagers whisper behind his back can bring him down. He isn't _Loony Lupin_ like they say. He has a gift.

Life goes on as best as it can in that forsaken little town, and at the full moon, Remus is heralded down to the bay by whispers, only they don't pain him this time. The tug at his bones is gentle and guiding and the ache is familiar. He heads straight to the water, ignoring the call of the cliffs, and there stands the boy, newly fallen from the sky.

They talk all night, and Remus learns the boy's name is Sirius. 'That's me, right there,' he says, pointing to an empty space in the constellations Remus has drawn himself. 'I'm from the stars.'

'The brightest star in the sky,' Remus murmurs. He's named them all. 'Sirius.'

The boy looks at him with disconcerting eyes and nods softly. 'Sirius,' he agrees.

The night passes quicker than any night for Remus has ever passed. He tells Sirius everything -- from his lonely childhood, to his father who left him, and to the boy who broke his heart and fled from the villagers' abuse.

Sirius doesn't speak often, he sits beside Remus on the rocks or kneels on the sand, and as before, they never touch. Remus persists in asking about his mother, but more often than not, Sirius shrugs or gives vague answers, and Remus is left more confused and frustrated than before.

The stars start to blink out of the sky as dawn encroaches on them, and Sirius stands. He tries to smile at Remus, but it is strange and far too inhuman, as it stretches unnaturally across his face. Remus thinks it looks like it has been borrowed from too many people, or cut up and rearranged on his features.

'Come with me,' the boy from the stars says.

'Come with you where?' Remus asks.

Sirius lifts a hand up slowly and points to the sky.

Remus looks at his ghostly hand and at his unsettling smile, and shakes his head. 'I can't. I have my mother to look after, she's ill, and she can't manage without --'

'Remus,' says Sirius. 'Your mother is dead.'

Remus frowns, and his head starts to ache. He blinks. 'She is,' he says in surprise. 'I forgot that. I don't know how I've forgotten that.'

Sirius asks him if he's sure he won't come, but Remus' head is too clouded and foggy too think. He says no, and Sirius nods, and walks into the waves. His head is goes under, and almost faster than Remus can see, a handful of stardust or possibly silver fireflies soar upwards towards the hollow in the heavens, and the dog-star is back in the sky.

The stars spin overhead, and Remus feels privileged to be the only one to witness this. He sits there on the rocky and pebbly beach until the sun comes up, and the stars have long since faded from the sky.

He leaves the beach that morning, and falls into a deep slumber in his bed, more peaceful that any he's had in years. When he wakes, his mother is by his bedside, her eyes warm as she gazes down on him, and she looks more content than she normally is.

'You've been gone a long time,' Remus tells her.

She smiles softly, and drifts off to look absently out of the window, in the direction of the sea. She's still there when he comes back from his job at the bakery.

Remus' mother has never stayed this long, and he can tell by the sea's whispers that it may be ready for him one day soon. He smiles.

The next full moon with the boy from the stars is much the same. The sea and the wind and the moon beckon him gently towards the dark cliffs and the moonlit bay, and the ache in his gut is like an old friend to Remus. He understands now. All he ever had to do was understand.

Sirius is standing on the sand, ankles in the foamy water, the moonlight glinting off his star-spangled gossamer robes. His back is to Remus, but as Remus runs towards him, a warm, strange sensation fills him to the brim.

It's familiar, and he's felt it before, only not like _this_.

He swallows and pushes it down, waiting for Sirius to turn and face him. He doesn't, so Remus steps into the water to approach Sirius. The water from around his ankles recedes as he does so, but he doesn't question it.

Sirius doesn't look at him. His gaze is cast upwards, towards the sky. The other stars burn brightly there, and Remus' conviction has never been stronger.

Sirius jerks his narrow chin upwards. 'I miss it. Being up there.'

Remus tilts his head back to take in the sky. It's wide and dark and midnight blue, and if he looks closely enough, he can still see the fracture lines where Sirius broke through into this realm. 'I named them all,' says Remus, looking up the stars glowing coldly above them in their interwoven constellations. 'Every last one of them.'

Sirius' head shifts slightly towards Remus, but he still doesn't look at him. He points to another star, dimmer than his. 'What's that one called?'

Remus stares at it. 'Regulus,' he says at last.

'Regulus,' repeats Sirius, and his voice is distant and lonely.

'Did you -- do you know -- Regulus?' ventures Remus.

'I did,' says Sirius sadly. 'Or I thought I did.'

'What's making you so sad?' asks Remus. He isn't used to seeing Sirius like this, pining and watching the skies like a lost boy who would never find his way back to Neverland. Hurt colours his tone as he says, 'I thought you'd be glad to see me.'

Sirius turns around suddenly, and his eyes, bracketed with curtains of hair as dark as night, seethe with an intensity that makes the silver in them burn brighter than Remus has ever seen them. 'Come with me, Remus,' he says passionately, and Remus finds himself pulled towards him by the low, ardent voice, and the hypnotic eyes. 'It's so cold here, and so empty, and everything is so, so sad. Come with me, we'll leave this place, and we'll sing with the stars, and it'll be so warm and so bright, and so alive, and you'll never feel lonely again.'

Remus swallows. He stares at Sirius, and struggles and fails to comprehend how somebody like him could _be,_ in this place, and moreover why he chose Remus, of all people, when he could have had anyone. He reaches out a hand, and more than anything, he yearns to feel a cool, silken hand encased in his own.

Sirius extends his own hand, but keeps it a short distance from Remus'. His eyes are wide and sad, and Remus knows what he is trying to say.

'I know. We can't,' he sighs, slowly drawing his own hand down to his side.

'But we could,' Sirius tells him. 'If you came with me. Then maybe I could hold your hand.'

Remus closes his eyes, and in the silence he can hear the waves whispering as they rush and recede from the shore, and his mother's distant singing echoing off the cliffs. 'I can't,' Remus answers at last, regret burning behind his eyes, and bitterness seeping into his words. This is what he has wanted all his life, more than anything. He opens his eyes, and when he sees Sirius, he almost wishes he hadn't. The boy from the stars is facing away from him once more, and the burning silver heart of the star in his eyes is now the dead, cold grey of a frozen-over lake.

'It's my mother,' Remus tells him, desperate for anything that will unfreeze the lake and bring back the ocean and the stars. 'She's ill, and I can't leave her.' His mother's eerie singing grows louder, and Remus thinks that he can make out a ghostly, wind-whipped figure standing on the edge of the highest cliff overlooking the sea in that grey little Welsh seaside town.

'She's dead, Remus,' Sirius tells him coldly.

He closes his eyes again, and when he opens them, Sirius is gone.

The shadows under Remus' eyes grow steadily darker, and fantasy becomes more and more difficult to distinguish from reality. His mother's visits are more frequent than ever, and Remus always talks to her, wherever they are. The villagers stare, and when the doctors come for Remus, he mentions the stars. They frown, and scribble down notes, but Remus, enamoured by the view from his window, takes no notice, because his mother is smiling from the chair in the corner, and the stars outside are brighter than ever.

More months pass and his mother grows steadily worse, and as always, Sirius asks him to come with him. There is nothing that Remus has ever wanted more, to escape from the confines of this awful, depressing little town to burn gloriously with Sirius amongst the stars and never be left behind ever again, but his answer is always the same. And every time, the boy from the stars burns colder and dimmer, but Remus has his mother to look after, no matter what Sirius might say about her.

The doctors call Remus in, and Remus is too distracted by the laughter of the wind outside and the whispering of the sea to understand a thing they say. They force him to take shiny, hard pills, which are dry and stick in Remus' throat as he swallows painfully. He doesn't like that.

The nurse treats him like a child, and despite this, she is perhaps the one of the only people in that town to treat Remus with any kindness, in her own fussy, condescending way.

The next time Remus sees Sirius, he is blurry and he looks unhappy. His voice crackles in and out like a broken radio, and as always he refuses when Sirius asks the question, but this time he isn't so sure of himself when Sirius tells him his mother is dead.

After all, the cliffs haven't called to him in moons, and the sea's whispering is static and muted, and curls around his brain in a way that doesn't make sense. His mother hasn't visited him.

One day, Remus runs down to the beach despite the weakened tug on his bones, and Sirius isn't there. He collapses on the pebbles and the sand, and weeps until he is empty, because the last person left has finally grown tired of him and his continual refusals, and has gone to find someone better than the lonely little Welsh boy who stares at the moon and believes in stars.

When the moon is full and white and round again, Remus feels no pull on his bones, and he is too tired to move anyway. There is no point, running down to the sea and making a fool of himself in front of the mocking stars and the villagers, who pity him now.

He doesn't want their pity. It's worse than their scorn.

Remus is so tired he feels like he might die. His insides are damaged and scorched, and he feels that at any given moment, his decayed and crippled body might collapse in on itself. He feels numb, far too numb, and he hopes pills will fix it.

They don't. They only make him vomit until he bleeds, and the frowning doctors frown some more and take notes. Months pass, and whenever Remus has been able to drag himself down to the beach with bare, bleeding feet, the moon mocks him, and the cliffs are silent, and he can't hear the whispering of the sea through the cotton wool that seems to have replaced his brain and his soul. And the beach is always empty.

Right then, right there, he makes a vow never to return again.

Remus still watches the sky. The moon waxes and wanes and swells and shrinks, but the stars are forever gone from his sky. He wonders if they were ever real, and if the frowning doctors and the villagers hadn't been right about him; if he hadn't just been _Loony Lupin_ all this time.

He always watches the moon, and it is always there, until one dark night, when the moon should be bright and mocking and full, the sky is empty and black, and Remus doesn't feel alright. The pills burn in his belly, and he clutches the toilet miserably and moans as his body rejects the poison, wondering how his organs are still inside him. He knows he's taken too many.

The moon is eclipsed, and with it, Remus' world. The hissing shadows are back, but now they're shouting, and the whispering sea is roaring, and the calling cliffs are now _screaming_ , and the blaring cacophany is more than his fragile and damaged mind can take. He howls animalistically as the voices overtake him, and the tugging ache in his gut is crushing and squeezing, and instead of the ocean in his bones it is liquid fire and it burns. His mother grips his shoulders and wails distortedly into his face but she's so pale and blood is pouring from her eyes and ears and nose and mouth, and he doesn't recognise her perverted warped features because it isn't her anymore.

He bursts out of his front door and shakes her off blindly, and stumbles down towards the sea, hoping that it clears his mind of the whispering shadows that creep at the corners, and the demons that won't let him rest. The fire in him has become pure agony, and it wrenches him up the stony and crumbling paths he roamed with his mother so many years ago. He hasn't climbed these cliffs in so long, but his feet find the indents and prints left behind by the two of them.

He reaches the highest point, so high that he can see the entire ocean, so high that he thinks he could touch the absent moon if it were there.

The screaming and the howling and the pain all die away, as if purged by the sudden fever, and suddenly Remus has clarity, more than he has had in his short, painful life.

The sea says it is ready for him, and the cliffs are willing to surrender him to the embrace of the waves and the gale.

Standing at the cliff edge, back to him, is the black haired boy from the stars, sharper and clearer than he's ever been. 'Come with me,' he says softly. It isn't windy on the beach, but the tips of Sirius' jet black hair are tugged ever so slightly in an unfelt breeze, and his voice is warm and low, as it has always been.

Remus knows now without a doubt that his mother is dead. And this is the cliff where she fell.

He takes a look back at the village he's spent his whole life in, and thinks of his father, who abandoned him in cowardice, and the boy who left him for the city in the south, and the villagers who laugh at him. He looks at his life, the pain, the blood, and the tears. He looks at Sirius, whose back is still turned to him, and he looks up at the sky. The stars are there, and they are so, so bright, and so alive, and so real, more real than anything Remus has touched in this world. He looks back at his life, and looks at Sirius and the stars, and he says _yes_.

He reaches for Sirius' hand, and for the first time, he touches the boy from the stars, and he feels real. Sirius' eyes are glowing and silver, and they are the heart and soul of the stars. Sirius takes his hand, warm and firm and strangely familiar, and together they step off the cliff, using the hanging web of the constellations to climb the skies and return home among the stars, to be truly happy for the first time.

The next morning the villagers find his body lying on the rocks, in exactly the same spot they found his mother, twelve long years ago.


End file.
